Niagara Falls Light Show !!!

From the beginning of November until the first week of January, the
Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Lights takes place. During these two
months a decorated six-kilometer route stretching from Dufferin Islands
along the Niagara Parkway, an area known as the Niagara Parks, is
illuminated by nearly three million lights and over 100 lighting
displays, including fireworks over the falls.

Although the Niagara
Falls is illuminated all round the year, the Winter Festival offers a
special spectacle. In spring and summer, the colored lights shine for
just three hours, but with less daylight in winter, curtains of color
wash over the falls each night for up to seven hours.

Crowds gather
along the sidewalk and railing on Niagara Parkway to see the show as
colored mist rises from the falls in front of them. The display starts
with patriotic themes - red, white and blue on the American Falls, red
and white for the horseshoe-shaped Canadian Falls. The light beams
emanate from a bank of 21 spotlights, each 30 inches in diameter,
sitting atop a raised stone bunker across the road.

History of the Illumination of Niagara Falls

Lighting the Falls, to allow visitors to enjoy the beauty of the mighty
Niagara even at night, was first attempted more than 150 years ago. In
1860, a spectacular illumination of the Falls celebrated a visit by the
Prince of Wales. About 200 coloured and white calcium, volcanic and
torpedo lights were placed along the banks above and below the American
Falls, on the road down the bank of the Canadian side of the gorge and
behind the water of the Horseshoe Falls. The lights were called Bengal
lights and were the kind used at sea to signal for help or give warning.

The lights were ignited along with rockets, spinning wheels and other
fireworks, creating an effect that the London Times called “grand,
magical and brilliant beyond all power of words to portray” the likes of
which the Prince would “probably never see again.”

Illumination of the Falls using electricity first occurred in January
1879, during a visit by the Marquis of Lorne, Governor-General of Canada
and his wife Princess Louise. The lights had an illumination power of
32,000 candles, just a fraction of the intensity used today.